Treadmill Tears

Today before my workout I decided to gently stretch my knee sleeves a bit before putting them on. I didn’t pull too hard for fear of ruining them, but I think it definitely helped! My legs are either adapting to the knee sleeves or the knee sleeves are just a bit looser… or both! My run today wasn’t nearly as tiresome as the past 2 days.

I was able to run 25 minutes straight today at 5.0 mph and incline 6%.

The workout:

Duration: 50 minutes

Max heart rate: 163 bpm

Avg heart rate: 143 bpm

Feel the burn: 392 kcals

Today I did the following workout on the running beast:

2 min walk (4.1 mph)

25 min run (5.0 mph- first time hitting the 5’s!!!)

2 min walk (4.1 mph)

2 advanced 50 second side planks (see below)

6 min run (5.0 mph)

Walking cool down (4.1 to 3.5 mph)

all at 6% incline

My total running mileage was about 2.6 miles today. :)

My training plan for the 10k on May 9, 2009:

DATE

START OF WEEK:

GOAL BY WEEK’s END

Week of April 20th:

Starting speed: 4.9mph; total distance: 2 miles (3.22k)

Speed: 5.2mph; total distance: 3 miles (4.82k)

Week of April 27th

Starting speed: 5.2mph; total distance: 3.2 miles (5.14k)

Speed: 5.5mph; total distance: 4.5 miles (7.24k)

Week of May 4th

Starting speed: 5.6 mph; total distance: 4.7 miles (7.56k)

Speed: 6.0; total distance: 6.2 miles (10k)

I think I am progressing along well for hitting my week end goal of 3 miles.

Day 27 (April 22): For today’s challenge I want you to try to do two advanced side planks. I thought my old side planks were hard until I tried these. Previously, I had been bending my arm and resting on my elbow when I did a side plank as shown in the photo.

Little did I know that you can actually make planks much more difficult if you extend your entire arm straight. I did 2 of these (one on each side) in the middle of my workout today and I was shaking like a leaf. I could only make it 50 seconds on each side. Granted, I was tired from the workout, but still. I want to get better at these! :) And not have to curse like a trucker in the process.

For the advanced side plank, simply extend the bottom arm straight.

MaryBe asks, “I have entertained the idea of using cloth napkins – but then I would use resources washing and drying them. So would I really come out ahead?”

This is a wonderful question and one that I have thought about as well. The way I see it is that if you throw your cloth napkins into the wash (along with other linens that you normally be washing), I don’t think it is using up much more energy.

Say you wash a dozen cloth napkins a week. That isn’t much room in the washing machine, and technically you wouldn’t be washing them on their own load (or at least I would try not to).

Also, if you spot wash stains and then wash in cold water I would think that you are using less energy that piling up paper napkins that end up straight into the landfill.

I need to start using my cloth napkins again. I have deep red ones and I wouldn’t recommend buying red cloth napkins because I can basically only wash them with other red loads, and I don’t do red loads often. Of course, there is the option of hand washing in a small amount of water in a basin…but I have just been too lazy to do so! I must get on this.

Thanks for the thought provoking question Mary!

Earth Day (Continued)

Despite all of the things I have heard about plastic bags and bottles, nothing impacted me as great as today’s Oprah show.

If you saw it, you know what I mean.

These pictures speak for themselves.

Want to know where your plastic is going? This bird sure knows where.

Oprah had on an Earth Day special. And the beginning of the show was just heart-breaking. Thousands of animals die daily because our obsession with plastic bags and other plastic products.

This picture below really got to me. It made my heart sink. This turtle lived its’ whole life with a plastic ring around it:

As I was running on the treadmill watching this show, tears streamed down my face. I felt for these animals, for our oceans buried in garbage, and for the future. It was quite overwhelming to see.

In some places of the Great Pacific Ocean the floating garbage—”estimated to be about 90 percent plastic—goes 90 feet deep. Elsewhere, there are six times more pieces of plastic than plankton, the main food source for many sea animals.” The garbage in the Pacific ocean is estimated to be the size of Texas.

Another shocking piece of information:

Beluga whales are being diagnosed with breast cancer, which may be caused by the chemicals they’re ingesting.

Angela, I think it is so admirable that you are spreading awareness about things we can do to be more sustainable, as well as with these photos. I never thought that our waste affected animals like that-which is so appalling. Keep up the great advice!
Hannah

Those pictures are so sad! And I just noticed the stat on the right side there about the amount of plastic bags used in the US – wow!! I bet it’s a lot in Canada too. I was actually glad to hear that Zehrs and Sobeys are charging 5 cents per bag now to encourage people to reuse bags. Stores like No Frills & Food Basics have been doing it for ages, so it’s nice to see other stores doing it too.

I always try to be as eco-conscious as I can(and re-usable bags are way cuter than any plastic bag!). I just wrote a 12 pg paper on climate change and did you know that there are already environmental refugees from global warming? The Carteret Islands in the South Pacific are going to be submerged by 2015 and all its inhabitants are being relocated. That’s crazy!

I’m happy Earth Day gives some more publicity to the problem and what we can do to help!

Angie your earth day ideas are great! I do think a better green note is not using the power of a computer…. But making recycled paper. I do this every week with my kids. I stack up the local news papers and then we make paper. Making paper is simple and fast and it is emission free and it keeps newspapers and flyers from going to recycling or the dump.
A second way is to use canvas bags for all shopping, not just the grocery store.
Boycott bottled water.
Something that is even better then energy efficient bulbs for saving emissions is turning off the lights, computer, TV, and not leaving chargers plugged in when not in use. Turning off what we are not using saves more then energy efficient bulbs. Also don’t leave laptops plugged in when they are not being used. Unless you plan to be on the move with your laptop you don’t need to charge it all the time, just plug it in to use.

I know there is a lot of confusion about paper products over cloth. This is a simple way to always answer your questions. Does it make more sense to buy disposable clothes every day or use cloth and wash it?? Cloth always wins. The one area where I think everyone has some room is diapers. Cloth is best but there are times you do need to use a disposable. Times have changed and we are on the move more and a baby sitting in a soiled cloth diaper in the heat on a long drive is not a really good idea. I think common sense has to take its part there. For those who are out and out against disposable diapers I ask you what you use during your period. Some times we just have to use disposal products.
Another way to save the earth is weeding by hand or using boiling water on a weed.
Yet another is your cleaning products for the home. I use maybe 1 or 2 bottles of commercial cleaners a year. I use vinegar, alcohol, baking soda, lemons and dish soap for almost every cleaning job. I use cleaning cloths mostly. I use unprinted newsprint for windows and mirrors when I have it instead of paper towel. I do use paper towel daily. I don’t like to clean the toilets with cloths. I use paper towel for toilet cleaning.
You can stop all magazine and news paper subscriptions that are delivered to the door.
Subscribe to them online. You have saved paper and the toxins of ink and bleach and the emissions from the vehicles used to deliver the products. The exception here is magazines that you collect that you will be keeping for years and years like books.

I love Earth Day because I can harry my dad especially hard on why we all can do more to help the world. If you’re a steward of the world, you better get off your lazy tush and…uh…stew?

I considered it a massive victory when I convinced him to switch to grass-fed organic beef. We’re a family of meat eaters, but I always try and make sure that our meat comes from animals who were raised humanely. I am not a PETA fan, as I think they are way too sensationalistic, but that video Meet Your Meat is a total eye-opener.

Congrats on the kickass workout! This is so silly, but here is the thing I like most about the treadmill: it makes me tuck my abs in, so I have a nice flat tummy for a little while. That and I can go in, break myself for 20 minutes, and get in a great workout. Haha, busy college student.

If you check out Polly’s site “Yoga is Yummy” she has a yoga video titled “Yoga for Arms” that i’ve been doing for quite a while now. The side planks on that video is exactly what you said you modified your planks to.. where you stretch your arm out that is on the floor…quite the challenge!

We use cloth napkins at my parents house and save energy by not washing them after every meal. If you’ve got little kids I’m sure they’d need to be washed more, but since we’re all adults, we’re a lot less messy when we eat! We wash them after meals with pasta sauce and other things that would stain, but if they’re made out of patterned material, you can’t tell when they’re only a little bit dirty.

I love side planks! They are getting to be not as challenging, though, so I’m definitely trying the advanced versions. Thanks for sharing! Oh, and I think swearing is a requirement with side planks. I tell myself it is.

That absolutley breaks my heart. We have the Planet Earth DVDs from National Geographic and there are the most disheartening segments on what we are doing to our planet. It seems like 1/2 the people are trying to save the world, while the other 1/2 is busy destroying it. Its so hard not to just get totally overwhelmed with it all. I get terrible anxiety when I think about animal suffering, and have to stop myself from going crazy! One person can make a difference, and you are a good example. Thanks again for getting the word out. I’m with ya girl :)

Inspired by your blog, when we did our grocery shopping last night we bought 10 reusable shopping bags instead of bagging in plastic. We felt so great even making a small change and we will no longer be using plastic bags to shop, which we do A LOT of! My husband who is by nature a creature of habit and convenience, was actually GIDDY with the feeling of doing something good for the earth. Next i will stop using plastic containers to store and baggies to pack snacks and sandwiches then on to not using bottled water.